of vultures
by innocuous nihil-boy
Summary: sequences of the entanglement of an unwelcome predator and his scavenged prey. semicanon Vicious x Gren, abuse, coercion.
1. scavenge

**of vultures.**

_all standard disclaimers apply. this is a work of fanfiction and therefore the author claims no legal rights to characters or implied storyline. no profit is made from this posting. the author does, however, claim all rights to the permutations of the words herein; this is his story of a story. warnings: harsh language, explicit male homosexual relationships, implied heterosexual relationships, emotional and sexual abuse, coercive sex, explicit and implied violence, intense angst. semi-canon. inescapable verbosity. you know how i roll._

**01: scavenge.**

"It's never about love."

Unsure what to make of this sudden confession from the erstwhile silent man beside her, unsure if she'd even understood his words, Faye Valentine simply glances sideways at him in surprise.

"It's never about love," he repeats, soft baritone voice muffled by the shotglass against his lips, curled into the barest of knowing smiles. With a swift tilt of his head he downs the amber liquid, thick trails of sugared whisky oozing down the interior when he sets it deftly atop the bar.

"What?" Faye responds in curious wonder, eyes raking over the slim masculine form crouched elegantly on the next barstool. _The jazzman,_ she realises after noticing the length of his black hair, _the one playing sax._ "You were good up there."

"Best three martinis of your life, huh?" His eyes are shaded by those ebon locks, only thinly smirking lips visible in the dim club atmosphere.

Faye's eyes, unshielded and a little too bright with the drink, narrow. "Were you watching me or something?"

A low sound of mockery escapes his nose, barely a chuckle. "Of course, we don't often see new faces in this dump that are worth watching."

"Hmph," she murmurs, returning to her previous position; cradling a half-empty martini with both olives still present. "A girl comes to this kind of dump to disappear, not be seen."

"A girl like you couldn't disappear if she wanted to." He tilts his head forward even more, shrouding his entire face with a curtain of black. "What are you running from?"

"A lot of men who think like you."

"So you know how I think, do you?"

Faye lets herself enjoy a familiar smirk, plucking an olive between twin manicured nails and popping it into her mouth. "All men think like you."

The stranger smiles, teeth glinting like shards of scrap metal against the shadows covering his face. "If that were true, you'd have no reason to run."

"Is that supposed to be comforting or insulting?" Faye drawls with more swagger than she feels, tipping back the last of her fourth drink.

When she sets the wide glass down, he is gone.


	2. kettle

**02: kettle.**

She had nowhere else to go.

Her bags were packed -- and lamentably few they were, what remained of her once-lavish wardrobe now whittled down to her typical daywear and the barest necessities; hey, every woman's got to have that slinky black dress and that sumptuous bathrobe. Even the stash pilfered violently from the Bebop barely filled a suitcase, but that was fine.

It had come to this, and she didn't want it back.

The solar system was hers for the traversing; entirely new moons brimming with nightclubs and bars, glimmering hotels and casinos, coated with the sickly smear of neon lights all blurred into one long trail of intoxication. It was enough to drive a sane man to epilepsy, but as for her...

Well, she didn't really want it back.

Somehow the allure of high-stakes cards pickpocketing littering her palette with fragrant cigars and the murmured promises of men seemed dim, far away in her past, the seedy underbelly of a world she'd long known, once loved, once relished in the rush of the gamble and the sting of loss and undeserved wins.

Faye Valentine was tired.

Her life stretched behind her at once both satisfying and disquieting, and in this moment slumped lankily on a cheap motel bed in the dirty part of town, the entire array of her collection of markers of the intersections of time piled in three shoddy suitcases at her feet, Faye could not think of a single place she wanted to go.

She had nowhere else to go because she could go anywhere, absolutely anywhere, and it all seemed exactly the same.

Same flashing neon meant to attract people like dumb flies, all flocking into the same places with the same hypnotic buzz, interested in the same unearned victories and pleasurable conquests. Beautiful girls in revealing clothing and wealthy men in tailored suits all wore the same face for each other; bodies pert and arched to discomfort or shoulders hunched in ambition and attention to the cards guarded near faces, long necks erect or retracted and bowed forward, black wingspans stretched wide on display or circles of predation closing in, the ruffling of feathers. Brilliant artificial plumes decorating soft youthful throats or balding heads slick with sweat, not blood, not blood.

The drone of insipid flirtatious conversation like unearthly cawing, talons clawing at each other, at whatever meat they found.

She'd been like them, once. Faye shuddered delicately.

But now, in this nowhere, there was a tiny dilapidated bar where the drinks were cheap and worth drinking, where the jazz was soulful and worth mourning, where a tall beautiful man could have been crying in the dark because he didn't think like them, where she couldn't see his eyes, where she could only see his eyes when he played the saxophone, where men could be beautiful.

Faye was tired of being beautiful; it was time she watched someone else perform.

She left her bags on the floor and the blinds closed.


	3. call

**03: call.**

It was a mellow night for Grencia, not thick with the sombre mood he found himself more frequently embracing these days. His improvised tune on the saxophone was slow and wandering, a delicate thing that issued a collective sigh of quiet sadness through the few bar occupants. Haggard men relaxed, shoulders slumped and savouring shots with less need for the numbing.

A slight smile curled Gren's lips around the mouthpiece when that woman walked in.

She simply walked, an even stride, no swaying or sashaying or customary confident projection that drew her so much attention last time. When she sat, she ordered a martini like she actually liked them and began sipping rhythmically, watching his performance with unacquiring eyes.

He began to play for her.

She was his most attentive audience, her face drawn with appreciation for something simple, a wholesome enjoyment of music for the sake of its moment. She just wanted to listen.

He let her.

...

When he packs his treasured brass instrument into the case, she strolls by; relaxed in the shoulders and smiling genuinely, if rather scantly. "I like your sound," she says, like a cool cat with all the time in the world. "Invite me over to your place," she says. "I don't wanna be alone tonight," she says.

"You'd still be alone if you were with me," he suggests, and it's sad, and he locks the clips on his saxophone case and stands up straight.

She shakes her head. "With you, I can be inside my own body, instead of outside and looking in, just watching. With you I'm not a spectator of myself. I can watch _you."_

Gren's expression of tiredness is warm and assenting. "You want me to play for you some more?"

"Or whatever," Faye shrugs as she follows him out the backstage exit, into the alleyway for performers, who are paid to ignore the cluttered garbage. Who were not customers paying to not see it. Who are the two of them, walking away from the carcass of the bar that is a feast for those still alone tonight. "Let's lick our own wounds."

With his free hand, Gren threads fingers through his black veil of hair and is relieved that the shower he anticipates will not rinse away any blood.


	4. talons

**04: talons.**

He mixed the woman a drink; her name was Faye and it seemed to be the thing to do, the thing two adults alone in an empty flat did. The only thing Grencia could bring himself to do.

He mixed it poorly; he'd never cared much for measurement or liquid volumes; his hands were haphazard on any subject except his skin-varnished sax. Even there they were careless, breaking in sudden waves of furious expression over the keys, but that gleaming brass icon of his wasted time was locked away in a case and here was this woman stretched across his couch.

He sat beside her.

Grencia was remembering.

...

It was only after he watched Vicious' retreating form that he noticed the fearsome scorpion split in twain, dismembered stinger sinking down the side of the blade. _His_ blade.

Without considering the consequences of chasing after a man whose job was to dispatch unwelcome followers, without pausing at all, Grencia tore that daunting knife from the sheer stone in which it was skillfully impaled -- removing a chunk of sandstone with the tip -- and stumbled after Vicious in an ungainly gait.

Although Gren was not a sandwalker, did not possess the lightness of foot or distribution of weight or whatever Vicious could do with his body to leave such even treadmarks, he managed to overtake the sullen man just before he entered a very uninviting cave.

"Vicious! Wait, Vicious! Hold up!"

Somehow, even halting his stride was a threatening act on Vicious; the subtle incline of his head to catch sight of Gren over his shoulder was deadly calm.

Suddenly Gren was standing a mere metre behind the man who had nearly impaled his face with a sharp object, and he realised that he was in fact returning that object in person. Was he _inviting _the possibility of real harm to befall him, or just stupid?

Or maybe a stab wound miles away from any medic was a fitting price for a few more precious minutes of company.

"What?" Though gruff, that voice was intoxicating to young and lonely ears.

"You forgot this," Grencia managed with a casual grin, as if to challenge how intimidating Vicious was during their brief encounter.

Now Vicious was canting his stance, and Gren nearly received an entire profile glimpse and was flattered. Yes, it must be stupidity.

"I. Forgot?" Vicious spoke steadily, deliberately, and with the tone of grinding molars; just enough pause to make Gren aware exactly how stupid.

"Or... well, maybe you intended to leave your weapon behind so I would have to bring it to you, just to see you again, huh?" Now Grencia was just asking for it, and he knew it, and was asking for it.

Vicious faced him. He nearly dropped the proffered knife.

"Is that. What you think."

"Uh, well..." he'd brazened his way through the introduction; might as well continue bitchslapping lady luck, "It's what I hope, anyway. Here." Grencia thrust the weapon in Vicious' direction in the least aggressive way possible; hilt forward, laid upon his hands like a sacred sword. "In case there are more scorpions."

After an idle moment of disdain, Vicious collected his knife and slid it expertly into a concealed shoulder sheath. "There are always scorpions here. Grencia."

And that was it. Gren was his.

He lowered his emptied hands to his sides, unaware of the dripping blood until Vicious stepped forward and took his wrist. His jaw fell a little; his lips parted a little; his throat bobbed with a forced swallow.

"I cut you."

"I'm sorry," he stammered.

Vicious snorted. _"You're _sorry?"

"Well, I mean..." Grencia stuffed his wounded fingers into his mouth just for the opportunity to shut it. He sucked the blood from his skin; half-heartedly, messily, spilling a thin trail down his chin. Vicious' eyes gleamed.

So that was what he liked.

...

Grencia then made a point of sitting in the least accessible, most scraggly rock outcroppings available whenever Vicious was in the vicinity, but no more instances of arachnid malice occurred. He was not want for cause to entreat the silver-haired man's company, however, for loneliness and war brought out the extrovert in Gren, and the extrovert in Gren brought out the sombre meditation in Vicious.

Gren did some meditation of his own, primarily on the subject of that strange creature hand-delivered to him by fate. Vicious spoke very little, so when he was moved by whatever urge could move him to communicate some thought or past musing, Gren attended in rapture. But Vicious spoke very little, so when they were silent together, blank-eyed mesmerised by the licking flames of a pitfire, Grencia contemplated the impossible nature of his captor.

What he realised over the course of many weeks and many invalidated ideas was that Vicious was a monster in manskin. Not the breed of monster that is ravenous, nor deranged, but is _soulless_. His needs, his passions were all bitter mimicries of the human condition, as though his creators had built a body to perfection and then aged it too much too quickly; opened him up and placed exaggerated symbols of mythology inside. Where men lusted, Vicious craved. Where men loved, Vicious obsessed. Where men protected, Vicious consumed.

Where men had hands to touch and caress, Vicious had only talons-- and he reminded Grencia of this with many scars.


	5. wake

**05: wake.**

"I'm afraid it's broken," Grencia murmurs as he snatches the tiny music box from Faye's fingertips with too much grace to be desperate. He sits.

She shrugs. "They think 'I'll just do this for a while, just a little while.' I'll fall in love when I'm older."

He scrapes the ceiling with his gaze and says, "I don't exactly feel up to the challenge."

"That's the point. You believe in these mating rituals because of the lies that the vultures tell."

"Do _I?"_

Faye contemplates the casual lean of Gren's posture, "No. You play the sax like you've been in love."

"My hair's too long. The blood gets all over it and rots."

She takes a sip from Grencia's chipped tumbler and puckers her lips. "You also don't mix drinks like you're trying to seduce me."

"Maybe I belong with the eaters of the dead anyway. Maybe what I wanted most was to be close to a walking corpse."

She raises her gaze to study his mouth as he speaks, focusing on the words his lips form and nothing else, concentrating through the haze because she is actually interested. She misses the sadness in his eyes.

"He carries a vulture on his shoulder now."

"He?" Her brow lifts.

Grencia turns his face away, to the wall. "Like his own personal devourer, meant to unleash upon all others who would fester with him, or the others who would pick his bones clean."

"And you're a... bone-picker?" Faye suppresses a smug smirk of self-congratulation for the clever misuse of his words to ask her _real _question.

He brushes a hand across his chest absently, rubbing a satin lapel between twin thin fingertips, "I don't know what I am. I've washed a lot of blood out of my hair- I always wash it out, but I'm rotting anyway."

"Hmph." She takes a long swig this time, and leans back, letting her head tilt and her eyelashes fall, throat visibly constricting as she swallows that noxious gulp. "I've never been in love." The jutting angle of her chin is a little too defiant.

"It doesn't matter. I'm going to take a shower."

...

When Vicious placed the tiny, almost delicate music box upon Gren's palm, he knew what he was doing. Gren had no idea.

...

"It doesn't matter what you know," his voice was steady but seemed now to be _more_ of a growl, or at least more appropriate- at last Gren was experiencing the situation he always knew that voice was designed for.

But Gren kept expecting teeth and they never came. Vicious never touched him with his mouth, never kissed him or suckled him or even bit him. He was expecting Vicious to want blood.

"I'm not interested in what you have to say," Vicious said. "You mean nothing to me." The way he whispered when he came made Gren realise it wasn't someone else he was trying to convince.

...

Once upon a time, men formed bonds of brotherhood over the stuttering rapports of their own mishandled weapons, far away from home. Once upon a time, men huddled together around a tiny firepit, shielding their precious flames from spying eyes with their own hunched shoulders, pressed so close. Once upon a time, Grencia had relished and mourned his kills amongst them.

Once upon a time, Grencia had been one of them.

But Vicious never attended any whisky-fueled funerals.

...

Grencia cannot sleep without the little song.


End file.
